Movie Review: Ralph Breaks The Internet (Wreck-It Ralph 2)

Okay, so this film is brand new, it has just come out in theaters... I went to see it on Saturday evening. I'll make this as spoiler-free as possible.

Ralph Breaks The Internet (Also knows as Wreck-It Ralph 2, Ralph 2.0... I've seen all three used) is the sequel to the original Wreck-It Ralph, released six years ago. I reviewed that one a couple years ago, if you feel like checking that review out (spoiler alert, though). In this new installment, Ralph and Vanellope are still best buds, six years after their adventure in Sugar Rush. They have fun in the various games of Litwak's arcade, they reminisce about life as video game characters, they look at the light of the real world coming through the sole unused plug of the power strip. Then they go in their respective games for doing what is, essentially, their job.

Vanellope is growing tired of always being on the same race tracks, seeing the same things over and over, and she wants more out of life. Ralph decides to create a race track just for her in Sugar Rush, which she unfortunately decides to drive into just as she's being controlled by a player, overriding theit input. Even though Vanellope ends up having loads of fun, the struggle on the gamer's side of things causes the steering wheel of the Sugar Rush cabinet to come off... and then Litwak literally breaks it in two while trying to repair it. Thankfully, another gamer in the arcade searches for a replacement online and finds one on eBay for just 200$. Litwak can't afford it though, so all seems lost.

As Sugar Rush is about to get unplugged, the candy and human inhabitants of that world hurry into the power strip, leaving the other inhabitants of the Arcade to figure out what to do. Most inhabitants find places to stay, while Fix-It Felix and Sergeant Tamora Calhoun decide to "adopt" the other racers (for what's, hopefully, temporary considering there's 15 of them!!). That evening, Ralph talks with Felix and figures out that there's only one way to save Sugar Rush: Go into the Internet (through the router Litwak installed that exact morning, no less!), buy the wheel, ship it to Litwak's and voilà!

The Internet is a gigantic place that looks like a city. This film had to keep doing everything like it's a giant metaphor, considering it did so in the original film. Unlike, say, The Emoji Movie where the apps felt like the focus more than the actual characters (not that there was much character in The Emoji Movie to begin with, it was soulless garbage) and were unchanged, with characters acting around them, here the websites tend to keep up the metaphor, usually in very clever ways, and the focus is always on the characters and their relationships. Most of the real-life websites pop up (heh) here or there, for cameo value, while the sites and games that really matter to the plot are invented, such as Buzzztube, the replacement YouTube... in a world where YouTube also exists, apparently.

Don't think about it too much, or many elements of the metaphor will start falling apart.

Moving to eBay to find the steering wheel, Ralph and Vanellope wind up dueling against a user for it, and end up pumping the price to a ridiculous 27,001.00$. You've read that right. But in order to keep the wheel, they now need to collect money. Real-life money. Well, the answer to that is simple, hire a hacker to get into PewDiePie's bank accounts. He won't notice. Nah, they first choose to follow an online ad that promises easy money through gaming.

Spamley (the spam advert's name), voiced by Bill Hader, redirects them to Slaughter Race, an online game... um... How to describe that one... Well, imagine Ubisoft's The Crew (as the game seems to focus a lot on street racing) with a hefty dose of GTA, and probably the more insane parts of Saints Row thrown in, all while staying as close to a PG-13 as a PG-rated movie can get. That attempt at easy money fails as they're unable to outwit the racer in the game whose car they had been sent off to steal. Shank, voiced by Gal Gadot, is the resident awesome woman, and though she applauds Vanellope's talent behind a steering wheel, she suggests Ralph gathers the money by becoming an Internet sensation instead. Time to get VIRAL in here!

And that's where I should stop. That's all I can reveal without delving into major spoilers for the story. There's of course Yesss, the character shown in the trailers (voiced by Taraji P. Henson), who turns out to be the Head of Buzzztube, explaining a lot of the elements of Internet fame, but I only mention her because she's in the trailers. The fictional fansite Oh My Disney is there with more cameos than you can shake a stick at, with of course all the scenes shown in promotional material of Vanellope interacting with the MANY princesses of Disney. The late Stan Lee's in there as an online avatar, too... I promised to myself that I wouldn't sob! In short: It was in a trailer? It's in the film in a form or another.

I'll be completely honest: I saw spoilers for this film about a month ago, when some guy in a Discord server I visit posted the entire synopsis as taken from a tie-in coloring book. Going to the theater, I mostly remembered small parts of that synopsis, including some plot details that made me leery as it would have been extremely easy to screw them up. Thankfully, my fears were unfounded. Ralph Breaks The Internet manages to work with these plot elements and the Aesop that is attached to them, while not cutting out any of the emotion tied to the conflict of the story.

A story about the Internet would have been really, really easy to mess up, as we've seen before. The internal logic would need to be strong, and the metaphor would have to hold up. As I say, the film mostly manages to work with all of those elements, by keeping the brand names mostly out of focus or as cameos, and by substituting every element of the online "world" (such as being connected, moving to a website, and so on) with something that feels appropriate as a replacement.

Like I said, though, don't spend too long thinking about that metaphor. Some things will eventually stick out as making little or no sense, and then you'll keep on searching for more things that don't work when you overthink. Don't do that. Trust me, some questions I have about this "world" will keep me up at night.

Disney gets an opportunity to do a lot of self-deprecation in this one, through Oh My Disney and the princesses, but also by spoofing recurring elements of Disney films, both old and recent. I won't tell you what exactly, but it's great. Unfortunately, the film still feels very much like a modern Disney film, meaning it's got beats to follow and tropes to feature, some of which have been seen in most, if not all, of the recent Disney films. Disney has been criticized a lot for becoming formulaic over the last few years, and that criticism is justified. Thankfully, it's not every recurring motif of recent animated Disney films that made it into this one, though I'm not saying more about that...

About 80% to 90% of the film takes place on the Internet. Once we follow Ralph and Vanellope in there, we nearly forget about Litwak's Arcade. We don't cut back every once in a while to seeing how Felix and Calhoun do, raising fifteen candy-themed human brats. Thankfully, the beginning and the end of the film make up for it with loads of great moments and jokes, from Zangief reading Dostoievsky to the Surge Protector (the "spirit" of the power strip) being given more personality in every scene where he appears.

All in all, it's a good film. I hesitate to call it as good as the first Wreck-It Ralph, because it's so radically different it feels like comparing apples and oranges. I love the first, I greatly enjoyed the second. It's still very creative and insightful. I recommend it, though I suggest you watch the first film beforehand.

Hiatus? Again? (Update on the situation)

I felt like I had to post something here today, mostly to explain the situation and why I might be going on a short hiatus.

First things first, I might not post a review on Friday. I need to build a buffer of reviews, so that I can better balance my actual job and this hobby of mine.

When I'll resume posting after the hiatus, you can expect a few Steam Packs, because they're a quick way to get rid of some clutter in my large Steam collection. I've been thinking about maybe just not write about every game that I play, but I actually prefer to do so for each game. Even if they're short.

I got a couple movie reviews coming up as well, with probably one right after the Steam Packs. I've yet to decide on the order, and whether I'll review something bigger before moving on to a film review.

My second dilemma is this: I've been struggling more and more to find themes for Top 12 articles. Outside of the usual "Top 12 episodes of X" that I could make in the future, there isn't much that I find myself able to talk about in those. I'm seriously considering dropping those.

My third dilemma is this: I've been upgrading my room so that I could move my Nintendo Wii there, hoping to no longer have to rely on the living room TV, which is always in use by one or another of the members of the family. I got a better TV, I got cable and a DVD player in order to watch movies on it rather than on my computer. More importantly, I now have a set-up that could let me transfer my Wii here, with some work.

However, that doesn't solve the next issue: Time. A lot of Wii and Nintendo 3DS games are fairly long, and I would need to spend much of my time playing them. I wcould only play on certain times in the living room. Even if I brought my console to my room I'd still need to spend much of my awake time away from work playing and writing.

I've personally asked my boss to do 32-hour weeks inatead of 40, in part so that I'd have more free time to do these reviews, and in part because working five nights a week would burn me out eventually. With four, I can get a more normal sleep schedule on the days where I don't work, However, I sleep a lot more during the week days now, which also cuts into my free time. And I'm not cutting into sleep hours!

I have no plans to stop doing Wii and Nintendo 3DS game reviews. They've become more difficult to do because I don't own capture cards, and therefore I can't record my playthrough and use them to add images to my reviews. That's why I resorted to Let's Plays. On top of that, like I said, a lot of Wii and 3DS games are prety lengthy, so grabbing enough good images from Let's Plays can be difficult.

The best solution I can see to all this is to go on a hiatus, write as many reviews as possible, and get a  buffer of articles done. I used to have a decent buffer in early 2018, but the long reviews posted this year (especially GTAV and Undertale) pretty much led to that buffer no longer existing. I need to build up one, now. So I might not post reviews for a couple weeks. Hopefully I can come back soon with more content, and hopefully better content overall.

Oh, and with Google+ ending next year, please make sure to follow me on my other official pages for the blog!

Steam Pack 14

Might as well get that one out of the way, it’s been in my plans for a while. I swear, I don’t play games nearly as fast as I buy them. Is that addiction? Maybe. Probably. What I should try to do someday is a big month with nothing but Steam Packs, in order to get some clutter out of the collection. There are games that I don’t feel I’d play for more than an hour, while others I end up playing far longer than the average playtime (as recorded on websites such as HowLongToBeat). I tend to try and beat games before reporting on them, too. Today, as usual, four more games are being reviewed! Let’s start with…

Chronology

In a Steampunk world, an old man with a watch that lets him travel between two time periods goes on a quest to save his present by changing the past.

Chronology is a game released to Steam by Bedtime Digital Games on May 12^th, 2014. This absolutely gorgeous adventure is in the purest tradition of puzzle platformers, a genre that seems extremely popular among indie developers. How many of those have I reviewed so far? I’ve lost count.

"I'm a talking snail that can stop time!"
"Not the strangest thing I've seen today."

The man, known only as the Old Inventor, thus has to travel across the wilderness in order to prevent the world-changing event of the past that has led to the grim and desperate present. His quest begins in the forest, and continues into the busy areas of town. With his watch, he can see both the past and the present, and when the path is blocked in one period he can proceed in the other. He can even change elements of the past, such as replanting a young tree to a different spot, and see it grow to be used as a platform in the present. On his journey he soon meets a big snail that talks and has time-freezing abilities of its own, though both travel in time together and can still move while time is frozen. Those two abilities, as you can imagine, become necessary together in order to get through the various traps of the partly-destroyed town of the final levels. And hey, the snail can even move around some odd corners, serve as a steed or even a platform in some situations!

On our way to save... er... the past? The present? The future?

An old man and a snail? It’s like the synopsis to a Pixar movie.

And so this adventure takes them to the heart of the city, where the Old Inventor and his slightly less sane acolyte harnessed the energy of a new and magical power source, only for it to go horribly wrong… and perhaps he can undo the bad present…

Hop! I'm no fan of snails, but this one's very useful.

Setting aside any nitpicks I would have about the time-travel elements of the story (because I’m that kind of sci-fi nerd), I would say this is a very good game! The puzzles aren’t extremely difficult for the most part, though as you progress more and more of them use a combination of the time-based mechanics. The banter between the childlike snail and the old inventor is pretty fun, and the story remains simple. Most of the tale is told through the environment, in a way. Seeing the lush, green past and the broken, decrepit present says more than words would. To top it off, the game is drop-dead gorgeous. I am left in awe at the beauty and detail of the environments visited.

How to open a door, puzzle platform style:
-Find key.
-Blast door, set it on fire, douse it, travel time, walk through.

The controls are pretty simple, and there are features to prevent frustration, such as the snail which cannot cross certain types of areas - in which case the Old Inventor can call for it and it’ll teleport near the man. Don’t ask how that works, that one stays unexplained.

I haven’t run into a lot of roadblocks here, aside from a few tricky puzzles here or there, especially at the end - which is normal, the tougher puzzles at the end of the puzzle-platform game, duh. Though I also ran into a glitch once where the old inventor got stuck into a floating piece of land, but it’s the only case I encountered. Also, to reach his goals, the inventor often does morally-questionable things. Needs of the many yadda yadda, I guess.

"I'm stuck in the walls!" Ah, the hazards of time travel.

Overall, a very fun experience, perhaps on the short side (it can be beaten in about two hours), but enjoyable nonetheless. Get it for 4.99$ on the Steam Store.

Dyna Bomb

I think I both get this one and don’t get it. The concept is simple enough, though: You control a little jetpack-wearing hero and must find your way to the exit of each level, collecting as many jewels as possible on the way.

You gotta do this quick, or you're gonna lose!

Made and published by 7 Raven Studios, and released on May 13^th, 2016, Dyna Bomb is a free-to-play title with plenty of platforming levels, with puzzles sprinkled in. Finding keys to open doors, traveling around in portals, fairly common video game fixtures. More than 64 levels split across 8 worlds, that’s not half-bad.

You can just look for the end, or you can go around killing enemies using bombs found inside the level. Be careful, though. Dyna dies instantly from being touched by an enemy, a laser, a blast… Get ready to die and restart levels a lot in here. And I do mean a LOT, because even the lightest touch of something deadly will kill. Sometimes you won’t even notice something is deadly until the character hits it. And if the enemies and hazards don’t kill you, maybe the time limit will, so you should hurry! Can you get three stars on every level?

I swear that last sentence sounded like I was shilling Angry Birds… If Dyna Bomb so far sounds in this review like it’s a mobile game put up on Steam, don’t worry, you’ll get that exact feeling while playing it, too.

The controls are bothersome, with the playable character rising faster than they move whenever they’re flying left or right, meaning it’s easy to hit one of the electrified spheres of an intermittent electric zapper blocking your way. Or, well, literally anything deadly on the screen. It’s like some messed-up cheap Mega Man with the controls as fickle as Flappy Bird. Oh, but don’t worry, you can continue where you are if you pay diamonds, the in-game currency that you collect as you complete levels.

...Eh. My luck's terrible. I doubt I'll be
around this slot machine much.

You can also spend the diamonds gathered on a slot machine to get items at random, or purchase proper power-ups before a level in order to beat it more easily. The entire thing feels as though 7 Raven Studios wanted really really badly to add microtransactions to it (pay real cash for diamonds to spend!), but had to take those away.

This game is alright, but I’m not a fan. It plays well and has a wide range of options, including two playable characters (not that they make much of a difference), but I was eventually turned off by the great difficulty as well as the labyrinthine design and length of the levels. That game feels designed to nickel-and-dime you… or, well, make you buy more microtransactions. It’s not bad, and I guess it’s a nice challenge if you feel like having a free game to play once in a while… but it’s not for me.

Rabbit Hole 3D

Reading has never been more dangerous!

How to go through an R.

Developed by Somi, published by Zero Rock Entertainment and released on April 25^th, 2014, Rabbit Hole 3D: Steam Edition is equal parts an arcade game and a short audiobook. Words will fly towards you very fast and you must pass through the holes between letters. That already sounds tricky. The levels are created from excerpts of the book Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, in particular the moment where Alice sees the white rabbit and follow him down, well… you can figure that one out.

The game features eight levels, which you can play one after the other in Ranked Mode, with no pauses between levels. Survive as long as possible and your final time will be recorded. Then there’s a solo mode in which you can play every level, one at a time, as preparation for the full game. Your puny little cube has only two Hit Points (or, rather, "lives") total, so it can hit a letter's solid blocks once and the next time it’s Game Over.

Gotta catch 'em all - the letters, I mean!

But don’t worry! Each letter forms a 5X5 square, and obviously your cube will have to pass through the word in an open hole among the letters. Some letters are red, others are blue: You’ll notice that all the blue letters are part of the word “RABBIT HOLE”. Pass through the word, close to a blue letter, and the corresponding letter will be darkened at the bottom of the screen in the expression "RABBIT HOLE". Collect all the letters of the words “RABBIT HOLE”, and you get an extra life! Not that collecting those letters will be easy, mind you.

BuT THEn AgAIn, cOLLEcTIng LETTERs Of THAT wORd Is AcTuALLy nOT sO dIffIcuLT, cOnsIdERIng HOw fREquEnT THEy TEnd TO BE In THE EngLIsH lAnguAgE. THE HARdEsT TO cOLLECT mAy BE THE LETTER B, sIncE yOu nEEd TwO Of THOsE, sO LOOk OuT fOR THAT OnE. ALsO THE wORds mOvE By cRAzy fAsT…

Almost there, my Dictionary Dex is almost complete! 

I can excuse the game’s difficulty since it’s meant to be played as a challenge, an arcade of sorts and the best times are recorded in the game’s high scores. I never made it past Level 4. It’s truly difficult and you need to learn the text in order to know what’s coming and plan your letter quest accordingly. Since the words move so fast, you will need to collect as many lives as possible in the early portions, so that you can face the later ones. It does reward your memory and reaction speed. It helps that the excerpt is read in portions as the level progresses, so you know what to expect soon.

But hey, I’ll always appreciate a game that is challenging, has an interesting concept, and promotes literature. That’s a plus in my book. Cool stuff, if you’ve got three dollars on the side.

Viridi

Let’s end this on a relaxing title. Calming, soothing… It’s just about taking care of plants.

Plant pot. Snail is mandatory. You must have one.

This simple game was made by Zoe Vartanian, Badru, Isa Hutchinson and Michael Bell, published by Ice Water Games and released on August 20^th, 2015. You get a pot for your plants, then a couple starting plants. You even get your own mandatory pet snail! Geez, start this review with a snail, end it with a snail. That’s funny. You can spray water on the plants whenever they need it, but remember that plants take time to grow. Not exactly real-time, mind you, but a couple weeks here at least. Keep your little world alive, spray only when necessary, don’t kill any plants, and you’re good to go! Plants can live a couple days without you watering them, so this really is a game you’ll play only for a few minutes at a time, since any action you can do will take, at best, a couple seconds.

There are achievements for this game, encouraging you to grow to full maturity at least one of every single plant in the game, and then keep on raising more and more. Eventually you can free up space by uprooting mature plants and getting them in the garden, a mystical place I’ve never witnessed. In the game, I mean, in real life I have seen the outside world… yeah… we do have a garden… I mean, right now it’s covered in snow. This is Canada in November after all…

5$ upfront, no rent, make sure to keep it tidy.
Curfew at 5 PM.

But that’s not all. There’s a shop in this game, and as you can guess there’s no in-game currency. Bring in your real money, and buy a map to a grove, or 5$ for a key to an apartment - wow, rent is cheap in that world. Maybe a decoration for cats? That’s 3$. Yeah, I had two of those at home, I just pawned them off to buy myself a key to a nice and cozy apartment. Then you can buy seedlings of any plant in the game, each with their scientific name (from Cheiridopsis Denticulata to Senecio Rowleyanus, passing by Kalanchoe Thrysiflora and Fenestraria Aurantiaca, and yes I repeatedly made sure that I spelled all of those correctly), and prices ranging from 9 to 39 cents. You do get one random seedling per week for free, though - among all the plants in the game, even the ones you already have. Want that completion? Be super-lucky for a minimum of 23 weeks, or pay about… hm. My calculations get to 4.07$ USD. For one seed of every plant? Not that bad, actually.

Still not a fan of snails... but it's a good tie-in to close the review.

Though it’s mostly a free game meant to be enjoyed at your own pace, so it’s not like you need to rush to get everything done in here. Play it for a few minutes at a time, or leave it running with its soothing music and calming visuals while you do anything else. There’s no hurry, right?

Stick around for Watching Paint Dry: The Game... What do you mean, someone actually tried to make that a real game on Steam? 

..............................................Urgh.

And that covers today’s four games. Maybe something in there interests you, maybe nothing does. It’s alright. Part of my goal with these Steam Packs is to play through my backlog and talk about all those games for this blog, yes. However, I would be very happy to hear that any of my articles and quick reviews have directed someone towards any of these games. Made you discover something. Made you play and enjoy a game you may have never heard of before. That makes what I do actually worth it.

I think I’ll work on a few more Steam Packs. I might try to review a Nintendo 3DS game before the end of the year…